OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/23329/Xiph_Org_Announces_Support_for_WebM_Open_Media_Project
Exploring the Future of Computingen-usCopyright 2001-2015, David Adamsadam+nospam@osnews.comTue, 31 Mar 2015 21:34:00 GMThttp://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gifOSNews.comhttp://www.osnews.com
I don't get ithttp://www.osnews.com/thread?425623
http://www.osnews.com/thread?425623I don't get what this means. Does it mean that they will focus on VP8 and theora development stops? Because I can't see any way they could keep developing both. Developing two competing codecs with the same goals really doesn't make sense to me.Thu, 20 May 2010 12:11:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Stratoukos)CommentsRE: I don't get ithttp://www.osnews.com/thread?425626
http://www.osnews.com/thread?425626

I don't get what this means. Does it mean that they will focus on VP8 and theora development stops? Because I can't see any way they could keep developing both. Developing two competing codecs with the same goals really doesn't make sense to me.

Xiph aren't developing WebM, they are merely stating that they support what Google are trying to do with WebM.

Xiph's part in WebM is the audio codec for WebM, which is Vorbis.

It is unclear what Xiph will be doing, but I imagine that they might decide to continue development of Theora. Despite repeated and vocal claims to the contrary, Theora is actually pretty good. Theora 1.2 (still in development) promises to be very competitive indeed.

I'm not sure if Xiph or Wikipedia will continue with Theora or go with WebM instead. It might depend on Mozilla and Opera and their continued support for Theora as well as their announced support for WebM.

It seems to me that two open video codecs would be harder for patent trolls to attack than just one. If Theora development continues, it could provide open video with a "fallback" position perhaps.

Itâs possible that this decision by Google will create an environment where there are several popular video formats (as there are currently several popular image formats). Google, in fact, has advocated for Theora as an alternative codec for mobile devices, and recently funded research for native decoding on ARM processors. As with other web formats, choice and competition are good.

Wikipedia is currently the largest site currently serving Theora video. Wikimedia Foundationâs head of communications Jay Walsh has said that the site is open to hosting multiple video formats, just as it currently hosts multiple image formats. âUltimately, this isnât so much about switching formats as it is about making more options available for more web users,â he said to NewTeeVee.

Edited 2010-05-20 12:36 UTCThu, 20 May 2010 12:32:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (lemur2)CommentsRE: I don't get ithttp://www.osnews.com/thread?425629
http://www.osnews.com/thread?425629[quote]Does it mean that they will focus on VP8 and theora development stops?[/quote]
Nope. VP8 is (and has always been) designed and optimised for online video (streaming, efficiency at small resolutions, small processing and memory specs).
Theora is still the open codec of choice for offline videos, and may on the contrary suddenly improve a lot by focusing only on that, instead of trying to fit all cases. Which h264 manages to do, only because it is a very good codec (at the expense of more computational power and memory we just begin to catch up with - many new computers (notebooks) still can't natively decode h264 without buying specialized software (coreavc) or hardware (nVidia CUDA or Broadcom chipsets)) and because it has been designed from the ground up to have different "profiles" for different uses.

On the other hand, Ogg development may switch to transOgg (search for "VP8" in this webpage: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/lj-pseudocut/o-response-1.html ).Edited 2010-05-20 12:41 UTCThu, 20 May 2010 12:40:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Radio)CommentsRE[2]: I don't get ithttp://www.osnews.com/thread?425630
http://www.osnews.com/thread?425630

That said, transOgg [the next rev of Ogg; if the Google VP8 leak is true, we'll have some breathing room soon to start more aggressively developing it] will use a lacing that pivots off of value 252 rather than 255. In this way, we still avoid 'wasting' an entire bit of numerical range when extending, but we avoid the runs of 255 to which Mr. Rullgard objects. And, it's truly the best of both worlds, which means there's no need for multiple optional encodings.

I don't know, but this quote seems to me to be saying that if Google open VP8 (as they have done, just announced), then Xiph would be interested in "back-porting" some of the optimisations in VP8 back into Ogg (Theora).Thu, 20 May 2010 12:49:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (lemur2)CommentsAbsolutely! Big thanks to Xiph!http://www.osnews.com/thread?425643
http://www.osnews.com/thread?425643Ogg Vorbis and Theora have been major forces for free software video over the past decade.

Whether Xiph decided to help WebM or not, any victory of WebM would be thanks to the ground breaking work over the last ten years by Xiph.

"We don't have any plans to drop support for Theora. We've seen good uptake for it," Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering at Mozilla, told InternetNews.com. "I don't think there is any reason for us to take it (Theora) out, so we're planning on supporting both codecs going forward."

From an engineering perspective, Mozilla has had development resources tasked with improving Theora. Now that Mozilla is also supporting VP8, Shaver doesn't expect it to impact the continued contributions to Theora.